Campaign copy

What campaign copy is

Campaign copy is one idea, with a start date and an end date, written once and then expressed in every place the campaign appears: the ad, the landing page, the emails, the social posts, the sales sheet, the sign in the window. The job is not writing more pieces. The job is making the pieces agree.

It is not a messaging framework, which is permanent and governs everything you say for years. A campaign is temporary and narrow: one offer, one audience, one period, one number that says whether it worked. It is also not the individual services on their own. If you only need the ads, that is advertising copy, and it costs less.

Who this is for

A business running something with a date attached: a launch, a seasonal push, an opening, a price change, a trade show. The usual problem is not that the pieces are bad. Each one is fine on its own. It is that the ad promises speed, the landing page talks about quality, the email leads on price, and the sales sheet uses a phrase nobody outside the company understands. A buyer who sees three of the four concludes that they are looking at three different things.

The second case is a business where different people write different pieces — an agency does the ads, the owner writes the emails, a designer supplies the brochure text — and nobody holds the idea.

You do not need this for a single piece. One page, one email, one set of ads: buy the one service. Campaign copy earns its price when there are four or more pieces that must not contradict each other.

What I write

• The one idea. A single sentence stating what the campaign says, to whom, and why now. Everything else is derived from it, and anything that cannot be derived from it is cut.
• The fixed words. The name of the offer, the price wording, the deadline wording and the call to action, written once so that all four pieces use them identically. This is where most campaigns quietly come apart.
• The proof. The one or two pieces of evidence the campaign leans on, and where each is allowed to appear.
• The pieces themselves. Each written for its own medium: a feed ad is not a shortened landing page, and a printed sheet is not a pasted web page.
• What is out of scope. The things this campaign is deliberately not saying, written down, because the fastest way to break a campaign is to add a second message halfway through.

What you get

The campaign message sheet. One page. The idea, the audience, the offer, the fixed words, the proof, the call to action and the out-of-scope list. It is what you hand to a designer, an agency or a salesperson, and it is what any new piece gets checked against later.

The individual pieces. Named and counted in the quote before anything starts. Typically some combination of search and feed ads, a landing page, two or three emails, a run of social posts, and a one-page leave-behind. Each arrives as its own document, in the format the person who uses it actually needs.

The sequence and the measure. One page saying what goes live in what order, on what dates, and the single number that will tell you afterwards whether the campaign worked. Agreed before writing, not invented at the end.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A family-run window and door company in Manitoba runs a spring campaign every year. Last year it had five pieces. The radio script said "warmer, quieter homes". The feed ads said "spring sale". The landing page headline said "Quality windows since 1978". The email said "book your free measure". The showroom banner said "Up to half off", which the owner had not approved and which nobody could substantiate.

This year the message sheet settles on one idea: book the measure before the end of April and the installation happens before the heat arrives. The fixed words are "book your measure by 30 April", used in that exact form on every piece. The proof is the install schedule, which genuinely fills by May. The pieces are two search ad groups, three feed ads, one landing page, three emails to the existing customer list, six social posts and a showroom card. The out-of-scope list says: no discount language, no claims about energy savings without a figure the supplier will stand behind. The measure is booked measures between 1 March and 30 April, compared with the same window last year.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the campaign is, when it runs, who it is for, and what counts as it having worked. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Every piece named and counted, with the revision rounds, agreed before anything starts.
3. Inputs. What you sold last time and what it earned, existing material, anything legal or supplier-imposed you cannot say. Three to five working days.
4. The message sheet first. Delivered on its own for approval before a single piece is written, because approving the idea once is cheaper than revising eight documents.
5. The pieces. Delivered in one batch, usually two to three weeks after the message sheet is signed off, with one round of revisions and the sequence page.

Three to five weeks from first call to a complete campaign is normal. A campaign with a fixed launch date should start at least six weeks before it.

What it costs

Campaign copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call, because the price follows the number of pieces rather than the size of the idea. A four-piece campaign and a twelve-piece campaign share the same message sheet and are not the same job. The pricing page shows the four ways of working; where a campaign runs every quarter, the monthly arrangement is usually the cheaper route. The number is fixed in writing before anything starts.

What happens next

Once a campaign has run, the most common next job is the page it pointed at, because the traffic arrived and the page was the weak link; that is a page built for one action. Businesses that liked having the idea written down often want the permanent version, which is the three points every piece of material should leave a reader holding. And a campaign that brought in a list of people who did not buy yet is best followed by a nurture sequence rather than another campaign. This piece of work is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.